Thomas S. Monson, the president of the LDS Church, made the age-change announcement during the church’s General Conference on Oct. 6, 2012. Previously, young men and women in the church could apply for missionary service at ages 19 and 21 respectively. Those ages were lowered to 18 and 19.

In the weeks following the announcement, missionary applications sent to the church exploded as an average of 700 applications a week mushroomed to approximately 4000 a week. Just over half of the applicants have been women.

“The enthusiastic response to the change in missionary age requirements has given thousands of young people more options to serve and they have responded with incredible faith,” said Elder Russell M. Nelson, one of the church’s apostles and chairman of the Missionary Executive Council.

According to a statement from the LDS Church: “The church periodically opens, closes and divides missions around the world to accommodate increases and decreases in missionary numbers and other needs.

“The new missions will function in the same areas covered by existing missions. No new countries or territories are opening to missionary work. These creations will bring the total number of church missions to 405.”

Copyright St. George News, StGeorgeUtah.com Inc., 2013, all rights reserved

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About the Author

Mori Kessler serves as a Senior Reporter for St. George News, having previously contributed as a writer and Interim Editor in 2011-12, and an assistant editor from 2012 to mid-2014. He began writing news as a freelancer in 2009 for Today in Dixie, and joined the writing staff of St. George News in mid-2010. He is also a shameless nerd and has a bad sense of direction, often telling people go left while he is pointing right. Numbers greater than five also confuse him.